Monthly Archives: March 2011

So I bent to pressure and picked up a tablet. No iPad for me, of course, I looked at a variety before deciding on the Viewsonic gTab at Sears. Of course there are some great ones out there, the Xoom and Samsung Galaxy Tab, some on the way, the Toshiba Tab, but I wanted something without a cellular contract. What I liked about the Viewsonic, in all the reviews, was that while their stock instance of Android was lame, the hardware will do amazing things with a root.

So in first reviewing the gTab, I’ll give some specs, and then will provide some additional reviews down the road.

So, the gTab is running Android 2.2, Froyo. Although you would really not notice it, since Viewsonic put on their own theme over top of it. You can sort of see it in the image above–you see three panels (weather, time, and news feed), sort of widgets. Fortunately, you can now turn that off, with an update, but not so good. It comes with a Tegra 2 dual core processor. Very good, should Android soon take advantage of that. I hope to see that soon, since the hardware is pretty slick. Battery life appears pretty good in my limited use. Another thumbs down is the lack of Market support. It comes with it’s own market, which really is just a link to an online app store. You can get official market though, and I will work on that.

So, as a very brief, initial review, I like the gTab. Some little quirks, but overall a good tablet. I will report more after some further use.

Spent the last three days in Raleigh for our state’s NCTIES tech conference. In years past, I saw a lot more open source and free resources. I really thought I would see that on a larger scale this year. Alas, short of one Linux session (by the same guy who did it last year) and a few Google sessions, not much in the way of free and open source.

That’s alright though, as much of the conference focused on PD side of things. Some decent sessions on online safety. We seem to FINALLY be at the point where we talk of balancing online safety with actual usability. No more of the ‘Dateline: How to Catch a Predator’ so I don’t need to allow my child any access. Definitely need to be safe, but there are some great resources out there. Like Edmodo, the closed, educational social networking site that looks just like Facebook.

What I did not see was any sessions on Creative Commons. Looks like we do not focus on Copyright, Fair Use, and CC anymore. A little scary because that suggestions to me teachers (and media coordinators) either put those discussions aside, or do not even know about them. Yikes! I would like to see more of that. Maybe I need to present next year!

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Photo used under Creative Commons license by flickr user David Warlick

Recently, we took a look at Tight VNC, a way to remotely connect to computers on your home or external networks. Doing that to external networks can bring up various security risks. In walks Open SSH (http://www.openssh.com/). Open SSH provides secure access to your networks by encrypting your entry and work on said networks. With your traffice encrypted, it removes all potential attacks to your network. Think of it like a tunnel. Those of you in areas with tunnels know you lose your radio stations halfway through, even your cell signals sometimes. Now, think of hackers as the radio/cell signals. When you access your network remotely through one of these SSH tools, they ‘tunnel’ into your network so you can effectively block any traces of your entry.

What is nice about OpenSSH is the flexibility in operating systems you can use it with. For Windows, you will most likely use PuTTY. Many of the corporate folks use this implementation. Of course you can find it on Linux, and even on Mac OS as well. Whatever your OS flavor, you should be set with some version of OpenSSH. Since maany versions exist, I will not try to review all of them, but from their site, you can find a lot of OS specific information.

Try out OpenSSH, especially if you want to access your home network remotely, say from school. This will help secure you and your network stay safe. If the big boys like Dell,HP, and Juniper use it, then you can probably feel safe about its security.